Monday, June 29, 2015

Disarray Over How To Retake Iraq’s Ramadi

The effort to retake Ramadi in Anbar province is now on
hold. Immediately after the city was taken an operation was announced to retake
it, but then things seemed to go awry. The Hashd wanted to clear northern Anbar
instead of Ramadi, and then said it would focus upon Fallujah. Local tribes
wanted to immediately attack the city, but were told that a plan needed to be
formulated first, which contradicted earlier statements. The result is that the
effort to take Ramadi appears in disarray.

The problem with the Ramadi operation is that too many
parties are involved with no one apparently in command. On May
17, 2015 the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) began retreating from Ramadi,
which led to its fall. Local tribes wanted
to counter attack right away, but were told to stop because there were no
plans. Nine days later, the Hashd said
that the effort to free the city had begun. At the end of the month, Badr
Organization Hadi Ameri told
the press that he had his own plan for fighting the Islamic State in Anbar.
First, Ameri stated that retaking Ramadi immediately was out of the question.
Instead, Badr was going to secure northern, northeast, and eastern Anbar to cut
off IS’s supply lines. That’s the reason why Hashd have been involved in
operations to clear places like Thar
Thar, which is to the north of Fallujah in between Lake Thar Thar and the
Salahaddin border. The spokesman for the Hashd then announced
that Fallujah would be the next target rather than Ramadi, because
Baghdad needed to be protected. Finally, the Hashd said
that the Ramadi operations were on hold so that people could leave the area.
The problem with these plans were that they were all done independently of the
Iraqi government. The Hashd for example announced the Ramadi offensive not the
Defense Ministry. The Hashd decided that eastern Anbar and then Fallujah would
be cleared first. A member of the Anbar provincial council complained that
this was all the sign of a lack of a united command. He went on to say that the
Hashd didn’t listen to the Anbar Operations Command, that there was no
cooperation between the Hashd, the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) and tribes, and
that the government was delaying things waiting for tribal fighters to be
trained by the Americans. The Anbar councilman was exactly right. The fight in
Anbar is being complicated by the plethora of organizations involved that don’t
appear to be cooperating. That accounts for the lack of a unified strategy to
retake Ramadi, and groups operating at cross purposes.

This is not the first time this has happened. The Tikrit
offensive for example, was planned
by pro-Iranian Hashd groups and Tehran and presented to the Iraqi government as
a fait accompli. The weakness of Baghdad in the face of the insurgency led it
to rely upon private groups for its defense. There is still the Iraqi army and
police, but they were devastated after the fall of Mosul and are in a slow and
long process to rebuild itself. There is the Hashd that is supposed to be under
the command of the Prime Minister, but as Ramadi and Tikrit showed his power
over them is nominal. The Hashd itself are split between different groups that
don’t always work with each other because of different loyalties and long time
rivalries. There are the tribes, which are weak and divided and lack the arms
to face the militants on their own and have come to rely upon anyone that will
provide it with military support. Finally, there is the peshmerga, which are
also divided by party, and have not shown much willingness to venture outside
of the disputed territories, which they claim as their own, and want to annex. The
result is a series of delayed or drawn out offensives. Ramadi could well be
re-taken, but it doesn’t appear like that will happen anytime soon. Not only
that, but it has already been one month since the city was seized by IS giving
it plenty of time to build up its defenses. These have not proven to stand up
to a determined and large assault, but they are effective in taking a deadly
toll. If Ramadi was moved on immediately the government’s forces could have
saved a lot of time and casualties. This is a dilemma that Baghdad will have to
face for the foreseeable future as the state remains weak and has to use
whatever forces are available to fight the Islamic State.

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About Me

Musings On Iraq was started in 2008 to explain the political, economic, security and cultural situation in Iraq via original articles and interviews. If you wish to contact me personally my email is: motown67@aol.com